The units will cost between $600 and $900 per unit, a price that he feels will discourage anyone from going into competition with similar units that are based on reverse engineering of his products. Production is not planned outside the US because the small size of these units makes it fairly efficient to ship all over the world. Customs and shipping costs could make these units up to 20 percent more expensive outside the US.

Rossi reckons that the price of the E-Cat will be so low that no one, even manufacturers in Asia, will be able to compete with the products Leonardo will manufacture in the US.Competition

I asked Rossi whether he thought any competitors were infringing on his intellectual property. While Rossi continued his policy of not commenting on his competitors he did say that his attorneys are aware of what competitors are doing and would take any actions they feel are necessary.

Certification

Safety certification is has been going on with Underwriters Laboratories for three months, and Rossi expects it to go on for some more months. Both UL and Leonardo are under NDA so Rossi wouldn’t comment further about the process.

Patents

Rossi expects that it will take upwards of five years for the patent to be finally granted. He said his patent attorneys are in dialogue with the US patent office and information is passing back and forth between Leonardo and the USPO.

Rossi’s Health

Rossi said that he has been blessed by God with good health and a strong constitution which allows him to keep up a vigorous work schedule. He typically works 16 hours per day, including some night work, and gets by on 4-5 hours of sleep per day.

These are the main points that were made in our conversation according to my notes and memory.

Interest in the latest test of Andrea Rossi’s energy catalyzer has exceeded that in any previous test. The result has been discussed intensely internationally. Does Rossi’s apparatus generate net energy. If so, how much.

The shortcomings of the test measurement methods were clear, though significant improvements had been made compared to previous ones. Data were retrieved only because Ny Teknik, without being prepared, took responsibility for gathering and recording the readings.

A first, conservative analysis of the measurements was made by Ny Teknik’s reporter immediately after the test (here’s a spread sheet with the data). Three extensive subsequent analyses have been done by the Americans Horace Heffner, David Roberson and Bob Higgins.

All three noted that deficiencies in the measurement methods make the result uncertain. Among the flaws is questionable positioning of the thermocouples for measuring water temperature.

In dialogue with Ny Teknik, however, Heffner, Roberson and Higgins tried to get answers to various questions to reduce uncertainty as much as possible.

The three made different assessments of what conclusions can be drawn.

Most skeptical was Heffner who wrote:

“Due to the locations of the thermocouples, the temperature measurements lack the degree of credibility required to make any reliable assessment of commercial value. The net power output could be anything from negative to positive.”

Roberson agreed on the problem regarding the thermocouples, yet drew a more positive conclusion:

“The long period of relatively constant heat production following deactivation of the E-cat main internal core heater suggests significant excess energy. Accurate determination of that energy cannot be established due to imperfections of the test setup.”

“Despite the test’s flaws (and considering the integrity of those involved), the data suggests that substantial excess energy (as heat) was produced. (…) Critical error analysis of the experiment will continue; but the expectation is that errors will be unable to account for the large excess heat output.”

Another person who commented was the American Jed Rothwell, who has followed the area LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) for many years.

He wrote: “The test produced irrefutable proof of anomalous energy production, in several different ways. After input power was turned off, not only did it remain hot for 4 hours, it twice sharply increased in temperature. This is first-principle proof that large amounts of energy were being generated inside the reactor.”

He also described a simple experiment that those who doubt the conclusion can perform.

(Rothwells conclusion and suggested experiment is here, and a comment by him also on lenr-canr.org).

Currently, there seems to be no way to get further with the data from the test on October 6 (minor updates to these documents will be done though – check for the most recent versions).

Rossi’s sight is now set on a test October 28 of a heat plant supposed to generate one megawatt thermal power. The test will be performed under the control of an unidentified customer who will buy the heat plant, provided that the promised power consumption to heat output ratio can be verified by the customer.

According to most people Ny Teknik spoke to, it is doubtful whether the test of the large heat plant can provide a clearer answer regarding net energy produced than tests of single modules of the energy catalyzer have done so far.

Both independent analysts and Ny Teknik’s readers ask instead for a new test of a module, but with much more accurate measurement methods, preferably conducted by independent persons at a neutral site.

Meanwhile competition seems to build up. The Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies which had a license agreement with Rossi until August when Rossi communicated a breach of contract, recently claimed that it not only has developed a product for the energy market but also its own core technology based on “Rossi’s invention or similar inventions.”

Defkalion’s VP of R&D and board member Prof Christos Stremmenos declared in a letter that this was not true. Alexandros Xanthoulis, representing the owners of Defkalion, then answered that Stremmenos didn’t have knowledge about this as he had been absent for several months.

According to Ny Teknik’s sources, Defkalion continues to meet with companies interested in acquiring licenses for manufacturing and distribution of Defkalion’s products, at a license fee amounting to 40.5 million Euros per factory.

The sources also told Ny Teknik that Defkalion offers interested clients to see its technology and let them verify the validity of it with independent scientists of their choice, after having deposited 500,000 Euros in an escrow account.

UPDATE (Oct 21, 16:45): Defkalion confirms this information with the following statement: “Price for exclusive license is 40.5 million Euros which includes blue prints, transfer of knowledge, and training to establish an operating factory producing up to 300.000 Hyperion [Defkalion’s product name] units annually. Potential licensees contact Defkalion with an interest to assume this exclusive license. They are invited to perform independent tests on our products with their own instruments. The 500,000 Euros in an Escrow Account is payable only on the condition that they are satisfied by the results of their measurements and they wish to proceed in the signing of a full contract.” (End of update)

Another researcher who works with LENR between nickel and hydrogen is the Italian Prof Francesco Piantelli who previously conducted research with Rossi’s scientific adviser, Prof Sergio Focardi.

One of the chief scientists at NASA, Dennis Bushnell recently recognized the potential of the Andrea Rossi energy catalyzer to positively impact the energy field. Although there have already been many demonstrations and the opening of Defkalion Green Technology’s 1 megawatt facility in Greece in October 2011, the scientific community and major media is just beginning to acknowledge the light of E-cat.

[This transcript is Copyleft 2011 New Energy Times. Permission is granted to reproduce this text as long as the text, this notice and the publication information are included in their entirety and no changes are made to this text.]

J. William Moore: I’d like to [look at] some of the [energy alternatives] that you think look most promising from your perspective.

Dennis Bushnell: The most interesting, and promising, at this point, in the farther term, but maybe not so far, is low-energy nuclear reactions. This has come out of [22] years of people producing energy but not knowing what it is — and we think we have a theory on it. It’s producing beta decay and heat without radiation. The research on this is very promising and it alone, if it comes to pass, would literally solve both [the] climate and energy [problems.]

MOORE: I find it extremely exciting that there might be something here, so what is it that you think is going on at the atomic level here?

BUSHNELL: Let me back up a little. [Stanley] Pons and [Martin] Fleischmann came out with an experiment that they labeled “cold fusion” about 22 years ago which had replication issues at the time. Also, all of the fusion theorists came out and said absolutely “This is not fusion.” And, of course, they were exactly correct, this is not fusion.

They’ve gone through 20 years of massive experimentation worldwide, in almost every country, where they’ve been able to produce this effect. But all of the energy produced by these “cold fusion” experiments over the last 22 years didn’t produce enough heat to boil water for tea. So people didn’t get too interested in it and nobody knew what it was.

Back in 2005, 2006, [Allen] Widom [and Lewis] Larsen came out with a theory that said, no it’s not “cold fusion,” it’s weak interactions using the Standard Model of quantum mechanics, only the weak interaction part. It says that if you set up one of the cells, and you don’t have to use deuterium, hydrogen works fine, nickel works fine and you don’t need palladium.

If you set this up you produce an electron – proton connection producing ultra-weak neutrons and if you have the right targets out there you produce beta-decay which produces heat.

At that point, in 2006, 2007 we became interested and started setting up a set of experiments that we’re just about ready to start finally, where we’re trying to experimentally validate this Widom-Larsen theory to find out whether or not it explains what’s going on. And in the process, we used quantum theory to optimize the particular surface morphologies to do this.

Then, as you mentioned, in January of this year [Andrea] Rossi, backed by [Sergio] Focardi, who had been working on this for many years, and in fact doing some of the best work worldwide, came out and did a demonstration first in January, they re-did it in February, re-did it in March, where for days they had one of these cells, a small cell, producing in the 10 to 15 kW range which is far more than enough to boil water for tea. And they say this is weak interaction, it’s not fusion.

So I think were almost over the “We don’t understanding it” problem. I think we’re almost over the “This doesn’t produce anything useful” problem. And so I think this will go forward fairly rapidly now. And if it does, this is capable of, by itself, completely changing geo-economics, geopolitics of solving quite a bit of [the] energy [problem.]

MOORE: I think this was either last week or the week before last, I ran a story on this. I went and took a look at it – they were using hydrogen and nickel, I believe, using hydrogen gas and putting that into this device. In looking at the video and photographs, it looks to be about the size of a fist and that thing was running from about 10:45 in the morning till about 4:30 when they finally turned it off — and generating, I forget exactly what it was — but it was a significant amount of energy in the form of steam.

BUSHNELL: It produces heat and did so for days and was in the 12 or 14 kW range and they [will be] producing, with a large number of these devices, a 1 MW power plant.

MOORE: That’s a pretty exciting thing. Do you think that this theory that was developed — are these NASA scientists that were working on that theory?

BUSHNELL: No, the theory was developed by Widom and Larsen. Widom is a faculty member and teacher at Northeastern and Larsen has a company in Chicago.

MOORE: So that looks promising and so you can take and generate steam, and of course, that’s what a nuclear reactor or coal-fired power plant is all about. They’re just there to produce steam and turn a turbine and produce power.

BUSHNELL: Once you’ve got heat, you can do everything. We looked at using LENR to power a space-access rocket and it had better performance conceptually than a conventional nuclear thermal rocket.

MOORE: Wow! Exciting.
Thanks to Steven B. Krivit of New Energy Times for the transcription of this interview.

This is a viable energy technology that uses commonly available materials, does not emit carbon dioxide or radioactive waste and is economical to build and operate.

Could the technology be suppressed when it is already in production?

The fossil fuel industries, coal (mountaintop removers), natural gas (frackers) and petroleum (oil spillers) days seem already numbered in the wake of the remarkable development in energy production that is Andrea Rossi`s energy catalyzer. They still currently reap enormous profits and hold tremendous political sway, but can never beat clean, renewable, E-cat at 1 cent per KW hour! E-cat modules are being manufactured for orders in Greece and elsewhere in Europe and the US.